Convex Partitions with 2-Edge Connected Dual Graphs

July 9, 2009
3:00-3:30p
Halligan 111A
Speaker: Mashhood Ishaque, Tufts University
Host:

Abstract

It is shown that for every finite set of disjoint convex polygonal obstacles in the plane, with a total of n vertices, the free space around the obstacles can be partitioned into open convex cells whose dual graph is 2-edge connected. Intuitively, every edge of the dual graph corresponds to a pair of adjacent cells that are both incident to the same vertex. Aichholzer et al. recently conjectured that given an even number of line-segment obstacles, one can construct a convex partition by successively extending the segments along their supporting lines such that the dual graph is the union of two edge- disjoint spanning trees. Here we present a counterexamples to this conjecture, with n disjoint line segments for any n ≥ 15, such that the dual graph of any convex partition constructed by this method has a bridge edge, and thus the dual graph cannot be partitioned into two spanning trees.